The hairy story of the Crocs' climb

Townsville coach Ian Stacker needed a new motivation for the cellar-dwelling Crocodiles. He hit on it - bad hair day, every day. Michael Cowley reports.

It's hardly surprising that several of the Townsville Crocodiles' basketball players, with their lengthy locks and rapidly growing facial hair, are beginning to take on the look of biblical characters.

After all, it seems they have spent the past two months with a favourite of the good book, Lazarus, the unofficial patron saint of comebacks, alongside them.

Plus, the fact that the Crocs are in the top six mix with just a month of the National Basketball League season remaining is something of a sporting miracle.

Their story dates back to the first week of December 2002 AD.

They had just played their 14th game of the season, and slumped to their 11th loss. With their record at three wins and 11 defeats, they were bottom, and the only prize they seemed in contention for was the wooden spoon.");document.write("

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Townsville coach Ian Stacker had tried everything. He had nothing left, and nothing to lose, so he opted for a bizarre challenge. No one could shave or get a haircut until the team won five games in succession.

"I think I'd tried everything else," he said. "We'd tried every sensible move that we could and nothing had worked.

"I'd changed the starting line-up several times, altered our weekly schedule, tried [giving the players] no days off, tried everything that I've tried previously that has turned things around and I was at an end as far as coming up with ideas that might turn it around for us, and finally the only thing that was left was to keep trying.

"The mindset from my point of view was that I wanted to come up with something that would get them thinking about our situation all the time.

"Sometimes they were coming to practice, then going home, and when they were at home they were forgetting about the predicament we were in. I just wanted to find some way to put it at the front of their thoughts on a regular basis. Every time they saw each other or every time they spoke to someone, everyone would make comment on the fact that they hadn't shaved, and that would remind them of what we were trying to get done.

"I felt by the end of December we had to get our record back to around 50 per cent, and I knew when I suggested the no shaving thing that we had a lot of games in December and it was either going to happen or not by then."

They won that next game, against West Sydney, followed it with a win in Sydney against the Kings, then downed Victoria, Melbourne and Adelaide. Five straight, and they were now able to get the sweaty, itchy hair off their faces. But they couldn't.

"Before we started the first game I said to them, 'If you guys don't want to do this you don't have to'," Stacker said. "We were getting ready for the West Sydney game, and there had been comments by others that it was a stupid idea, so I gave the team the option of not doing it if they didn't want to, and they all said, 'No, we'll do it, we think it's a good idea'.

"Then, after the five wins, I gave them the opportunity that if they wanted to they could shave and get a haircut, as we had achieved what we set out to do.

"But, again, they said it had a good feel to it and they didn't want to mess with the Hoop gods, so to speak. It was working, so they decided to stick with it until the winning streak ends."

Just on two months, and 11 games since all the body hair began to grow, the Crocs still haven't lost. Tomorrow night they will attempt to set a club record run of 12 wins. By the end of the regular season, they could have equalled the NBL record of 16 straight wins.

"It's getting very hairy up here," Stacker said. "Some of the young blokes have had a bit of trouble growing it. Peter Crawford's got patches here and there, but the older guys like Mike Kelly and Rob Rose have pretty thick faces of hair, and Graeme Anstey looks like a lumberjack.

"Our crowds are also getting into it. We had some young kids going to the game last week with beards drawn on their faces, and a few fans coming with false beards to the game."

Things couldn't be much better now in the far north, but two months ago they couldn't have been much worse.

Injuries to key players, particularly import Wayne Turner, had turned the Crocs into the easybeats of the league. In a town that had become used to success after watching their team make the grand final two seasons earlier, the call for change grew.

"We were working as hard as we could work, the team were all committed and there was never any chemistry problems in the team," Stacker said.

"I really believed that things would turn around for us if we kept plugging away.

"I'm a firm believer that things can work out if you keep positive attitude and keep believing in what you're doing, and believing in your people."

While many thought, during the losing sequence, that Stacker would be sacked, general manager David Carmichael was quick to say the coach had the support of the board.

"It's funny, both Brisbane and us were 3-11 at the same stage," Stacker said. "Brisbane fired their coach and brought in a pretty good player in Kevin Freeman and they are still on the bottom. We stuck with our people and here we are doing well, so I guess firing the coach isn't always the right answer."

Sessions with an ex-SAS specialist have also helped, and the mix of mind-building and hair-building have been win-building.

Who's to say that the Crocs winning run will stop at 12 or even 16 games?

Come the first week of April - the grand final series - and the Crocs could conceivably have notched a 22-win run and the title would be theirs.

"On the NBL Media Guide each year, they have the championship team pictured with the trophy," Stacker said.

"Our objective is to have the hairiest, ugliest looking photo ever taken, plastered across the media guide. We all hope we can get that done, then it's off to have a shave and a haircut."